REPORT ON THE 2003 FIELDWORK SEASON OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY AT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF EL-HIBEH, BENI-SUEF GOVERNORATE

By Carol A. Redmount, Project Director 

Abstract

El-Hibeh, ancient Egyptian Teudjoi and Greek Ankyronpolis, lies about 55 km south of Beni Suef, on the east bank of the Nile (Figure 1).

 Occupation at El-Hibeh began and seems to have been most extensive during the Third Intermediate Period (TIP; approximately 1070-664 BCE), and the site is very important for our understanding of the archaeology and history of this era. El-Hibeh continued to be occupied  into Byzantine and possibly early Islamic times. The site is well known as the reported find spot of several important papyri, including the Tale of Wenamon and the Petition of Petiese. Sheshonq I, first king of Dynasty 22, built a small limestone temple at the site that is mentioned in Papyrus Rylands IX, also known as the Petition of Petiese, and that still stands today, although it is deteriorating rapidly because of the fluctuating watertable at the site and the poor quality of the local limestone from which it was constructed. El-Hibeh is, like most sites in Egypt today, endangered by a combination of factors, in this case the rising watertable of the Nile, the increased planting and irrigation of local agriculture, the spreading land claims of the villages north and south of the site, and the completion of the new highway from Cairo on the east side of the Nile. Pressure on the site from these sources is already serious and will continue to worsen. Despite the best efforts of the Supreme Council on Antiquities, looting of the site for the antiquities market has continued, especially when no archaeological mission was working at the site.

El-Hibeh consists of two main parts: 1) an important walled town mound; and 2) a series of outlying cemeteries with numerous burials, mostly disturbed, cut into the desert surrounding the site. In 2003, the UC Berkeley mission continued GIS mapping and surface rescue and salvage survey of the site, monitored and continued to record the condition of the Sheshonq temple, expanded the excavation area within the Sheshonq temple temenos wall, and dug a series of probe trenches at selected locations on the site to test watertable levels and site preservation characteristics and to begin to get a stratigraphic profile of various areas in the site. The two low-lying areas along the western edge of the site north of the temple precinct, called CH and NH2, produced, surprisingly, 2.5 and 3.5 m, respectively, of apparently undisturbed occupational remains dating dominantly or entirely to the TIP and lying above or just at the watertable.

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